Green Daily

What was it the Beatles sang in Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, in the hallucinogenic phase of their career when they were dressing like circus chimps and writing embarassingly psychedelic lyrics - "tangerine trees and marmalade skies"?

I can't speak to the tangerine trees - which I suppose are actual things, unless tangerines grow on bushes - but Australian scientist and environmental activist Tim Flannery says that we may have to look at changing the sky's colour if we want to save ourselves from the worst excesses of climate change.

Speaking at a conference down under, Flannery said that it may be too late to halt massive climate change simply through reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and that more radical solutions may have to be found. One concept that's been tossed around is the idea of emitting huge quantiities of sulphur into the atmophere to produce what' s called "global dimming" , which with any luck would bring temperatures down to a safer level. The process, however, would likely change the colour of the sky.

Flannery said that there's already enough pollution in the air to cause dangerous climate change, and that we don't have much time before drastic action could be necessary to ameliorate the situation.